The Incredibly Improbable Intergalactic Adventures of Matt Holt
by Stratagem
Summary: Shiro is found by the misfit crew of a rebel spaceship and reunites with Matt Holt, who has quite the story to tell as the crew tries to return Shiro to the Castle-ship.
1. In Which a Giant Space Skunk is Rescued

Disclaimer: I don't own VLD!

A/N: This takes place a few days after the end of Season 2! It's also in the same timeline/universe as my Water and Blood story, but this story takes place before that one. You don't necessarily have to read one to understand the other or anything! They work as standalones too.

 **The Incredibly Improbable [But True] Intergalactic Adventures of Matthew J. Holt, Rebel at Large**

In Which a Giant Space Skunk is Rescued From Z-Space

There was something on his chest. It felt like a medium-sized dog was sitting on him without any intention of moving. Shiro stirred into consciousness, but the weight on his ribcage didn't go away. It did, however, shift slightly forward, and he felt small hands press against his chest. "Hey, are you dead?"

His mind flashed back to his days in the druids' experiment chambers on the Galra ship and how he had been strapped down to a table, unable to move. The weight on his chest was different this time, but it still felt like he couldn't move, like he was being restrained. His limbs felt heavy, and his mind was sluggish. Panic shot through the torpid thoughts, urging him to wake up.

"Look, you're breathing. Congrats. What kind of earthling are you, anyways? I hope you're better than the one we have. Can we trade you?"

"Get off me," Shiro mumbled.

"It speaks!" The weight on his chest moved again, and he felt one of those small hands pry one of his eyes open. "Good morning."

Fear made Shiro's heart jump. This was wrong, where was he? Where was his lion? Where was _he_?

The thing that was sitting on his chest was completely foreign to him, but it looked like a cross between a lemur and an owl, with huge green eyes and four arms. Shaggy grey and green fur and feathery like things covered it, as if it had moss growing on it.

What was going on? Where was his team? Where was Black?

"Are you broken? Your heart is beating really fast."

Shiro sat up, which forced the alien to get off him. It leapt away and landed on a shelf not far enough away, its hand wrapped around a piece of piping. Piping. He was sitting on a metal floor in a small room that was slightly chilly and full of potted plants.

What. Was. Going. On.

"What were you doing in Z-space, anyways?" the alien asked. It sat down on the shelf and kicked its legs back and forth.

"I don't…" What was it talking about? "Where's my team?"

"What team?" the alien asked, blinking its owl-eyes at him. "You were the only one floating around in Z-space, which you still haven't explained. Do you know how hard it is to get there?

Shiro put his head in his hands, trying to focus on the here and now as his mind tried to spin out of control. Calm, stay calm. He had to figure this out and get back to the fight. He had no idea what had happened to the others…

"I have to go." He stood up and stumbled toward the door.

"Where?" the alien asked. It jumped to another shelf and stared at him. "There's nowhere to go."

"Let me out!" Shiro slammed a fist against the door, and it promptly sprang open. He hurried out and found himself in a metal corridor, doors lining the sides. There were paintings on the doors and sayings in alien languages, but he didn't think any of them were the exit. He was having trouble gathering his thoughts, but he was aware of the small alien following out of the room.

"Hey, guys, problem over here," the alien called, and Shiro took that to mean he only had a limited amount of time to get out of there.

"What did you do this time?" a deep voice asked from farther away.

"Ehhh…just help me!"

Shiro tried to get his wobbly legs under control as he wobbled down the corridor, hunting for the exit. If he could just get out of here and take a minute to think, he was sure he would figure out what was going on.

There was a clatter ahead of him. He looked up and realized that there was a level above this one, and it was accessible by a ladder. There was a young woman standing on the next level, and the moment she saw him she yelped, wings flared out from behind her, nearly taking up the whole space. She was a dark deep blue and covered in what looked like silver freckles, and she was staring at him like she had seen a ghost.

All right, so he couldn't get out that way, not with her blocking the way.

There were footsteps behind the woman on the landing and then a tenor voice spoke. "I swear, if that moron let Spock and Bones out of their cage again, I'm going to jettison him with the trash."

That voice. No way. Shiro covered his ears, certain he was hallucinating. What was wrong with him? Maybe this was all a nightmare.

"Era, what's with the wings? You all right?"

The woman's wings folded down, revealing a young man standing to her side, his hand resting on her lower back. Light brown hair fanned out around his shoulders, and light brown eyes the same color as Pidge's gawked at Shiro. All the color drained from his grease-smudged face, and suddenly the woman was supporting him, letting him lean against her.

"Shiro?

Now was a great time to sit down on the floor. Shiro slumped to the ground, landing on his knees, exhaustion and surprise and disbelief hitting him all at once. He sensed someone approaching behind him, and his instincts were to lash out, but he couldn't stop staring at his old roommate and friend.

"Matt, you loser, you killed it," the small alien's voice complained behind him.

"Not another one," the deep voice from earlier said.

Shiro was aware of Matt Holt rushing toward him as he fell back into darkness.

"Shiro!"


	2. In Which Space Skunk Gets a Nice Hug

Disclaimer: I don't own Voltron!

A/N: Thank y'all for all the kind comments and likes and what-not! Comments give me serious fuel and make me want to write more, so yeah, here's some more Rebel Matt and his Rebel Fam with Lost-in-Space Shiro!

* * *

In Which Space Skunk Gets a Nice Hug and Matt Cries 'Cause "BRO"

"Wait, wait, waaaait, so this is _the_ Shiro? The psycho crazy one?"

"That's not— It's— He did it to protect me."

"Yeah, well, that was a hell of a way to show someone how much he cares."

"Shut up, Zyrill."

Shiro felt a hand tapping gently against his face, rousing him to consciousness again. Maybe if all the voices would stop bickering with each other, he would be more inclined to pay attention.

"Shiro? Shiro, please wake up…"

"Matt, don't startle him," said the deeper voice, "He might lash out."

Shiro groaned and leaned away from the hand then forced his eyes to open. He was surrounded by people but kneeling next to him was one extremely familiar person.

Pidge was going to totally lose her mind once he brought this guy back to the Castle.

"Matt?" Was he still scared of him? The last time he had seen Matt, the younger man had been trembling, terrified out of his mind, and in pain, which Shiro had been the cause of. Maybe he didn't even want Shiro to be here, not that he had a choice.

Shiro didn't even know where 'here' was.

Apparently all his worrying was pointless. The air was nearly crushed out of his lungs as Matt grabbed him and yanked him into a hug. After a while, Matt pushed him away and held him at arm's length, a watery crooked smile on his face.

"Nice hair, bro."

Shiro let out a relieved, surprised laugh. "You, too, Shaggy." He hugged Matt fiercely, grateful to be accepted instead of feared. He had no idea what was going on or how he had gotten here, but at least wherever he was, Matt was here too. That was a plus.

The owl-lemur alien let out a huff. "Humans are too weird."

"I think it's sweet," an amused female voice said.

"Oh, you would."

Matt pulled away and shook his head, disbelief written all over his face. "What're you doing here? I've been looking for you and dad for the past year, and now you just show up? Not that I'm complaining, but, man..."

"I don't know," Shiro replied honestly, "I was in my lion, and then I was here, wherever here is."

"'Here' is a kickass spaceship, but lion?" Matt asked, his eyebrows coming together in a curious expression.

"It's a long story."

"Matt, are you going to introduce us to your friend?"

Shiro remembered the other people who had been standing around, and he finally looked up at them. There were four of them including the owl-lemur alien, and all of them were looking at him with varying degrees of suspicion.

"Oh, yeah." Matt stood up and held out a hand to him, which Shiro gratefully took, allowing Matt to pull him to his feet.

Matt looked different. He wasn't the same scrawny guy that Shiro remembered. Now there was a wiry muscled look to him, and he seemed to have gotten rid of the glasses altogether. Plus he was taller? Definitely taller. He also just seemed more confident.

"Guys, this is my friend Shiro," Matt said, "Be nicer to him than you are to me. Shiro, this is the crew of the _Outcast_ , minus one. They took me in a while back."

"After we stole you from the Galra," said the one with the deep voice. That voice belonged to a tall, bulky alien with light gray skin and dark brown markings on his face and arms. Spikes ran down along the backs of his arms, and there were two rows of spikes that ran backwards across his skull.

His arms were crossed and he was watching Shiro closely with eyes that had square black irises and bright purple pupils. The lemur-owl alien was sitting on his shoulder, looking like that was a regular perch for it.

"That's Nevan, and you've sort of met Zyrill," Matt said, pointing toward the gray alien and the little lemur-owl, "And Iwari's right beside him. She's our captain."

On the gray guy's right side stood an equally tall, female alien. She looked sort of like a dragon, if Shiro had to pick something she reminded him of. With sharp slitted green eyes, she was covered in deep, emerald green scales, and she had bright blue frilled ears.

She nodded to him, but her eyes flicked toward Matt. He had no doubt that if it looked like he might hurt Matt in the slightest, she would put him down before he could try. Not that he would. It seemed that Matt had found people who cared about him. Shiro knew how that felt.

"And this is Era," Matt said with a certain soft affectionate note in his voice that Shiro didn't fail to notice. He tried not to grin as his babbles-when-talks-to-girls friend extended a hand toward the dark blue young woman with wings and pulled her closer, looping his arm around her waist.

"Hi." She gave him an uncertain wave, her silver eyes wary. She stood right beside Matt, leaning toward him. He saw how short she was now, probably around the same height as Pidge.

Pidge.

"We have a lot to talk about," Shiro said, hardly knowing where he should begin. Did he start right after they were separated? Maybe he should start with Pidge? Or would that be too overwhelming?

"No kidding," Matt said with a half-smile.

"Are you hungry, Shiro?" asked Iwari, "It's almost lunch time, if you'd like something to eat while we all talk."

It was surreal. It almost felt like he was going to spend the night at one of his friend's houses back when he was a kid. Except they were in space, and this was a spaceship. He had just been in a gigantic robot cat fighting an evil alien overlord who was threatening to destroy all freedom in the universe in an all-out space battle that rivaled anything in _Star Wars_ and _Star Trek_ combined.

But yeah, sure, he could eat a sandwich.


	3. In Which Matt's Space Family Makes Lunch

Disclaimer: I don't own VLD!

A/N: Thank you everyone for your kind comments!Thank you to Kim Smuga, Otaku Hazel Eyes, Wishing for Dragons, and one cool guest for reviewing. It means a lot to me! I'm having so much fun with this project! The quote in the story is from Star Wars.

* * *

 _In Which Matt's Space Family Makes Lunch for Shiro  
_

Shiro sat at the ship's galley table, taking everything in. While the castle was sleek and shiny and modern, this ship looked...almost homey? The galley was surprisingly cozy. The walls were painted in warm dark yellows and reds, and the table they were sitting at was actually made of wood. A few counter-tops had appliances and gear on them, and a few dishes were in a weird white sink. Bar stools were lined up at an island counter in the middle of the room, the one where Nevan and Era were working together to fix lunch on what looked like a stove-top.

Pictures of the crew and sayings had been pasted to the walls, and a few of them must have come from Matt because they were quotes from old Earth movies.

 _Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering._

Matt must've seen him looking at the quote because he gave him a smirk. "Once nerdy, always nerdy."

Shiro shook his head, not really surprised. He was, however, still in mild disbelief at how _adjusted_ Matt seemed to be. He had always imagined Matt living a hardscrabble life on the edge of the universe with a bunch of rough and ragged rebel types, waiting to be found. He guessed that hadn't really been fair to Matt.

"Hand me the waref, please," Era said, pointing at what looked like a spice rack over Nevan's head. He reached up and grabbed a bottle, handing it to the much shorter woman.

"Her wings are the coolest thing ever," Matt said to Shiro, his eyes on Era. She had short, wavy dark purple-pink hair that was currently held back by a headband, and she wore a halter top that was missing almost the entire back. Her wings folded up in such an intricate, compact way that they seemed to melt against her back, leaving what looked like a regular humanoid back with a raised feather pattern.

She glanced over at Matt, her hand on her hip as she flipped what looked like a burger. The smell was literally making Shiro's mouth water. "You know, luv, you could set the table instead of just sitting there, if you're going to avoid talking about things."

"Or you could set the table _and_ talk," their captain, Iwari, said. She was sitting at the bar, slicing up pieces of…something. A vegetable? It was white with green striations and looked a little like a carrot. Her frilled ears waved slightly back and forth and darkened from blue to orange as Nevan leaned over the bar and muttered something to her.

"All right, all right." Matt smiled in a chagrined way and got up. "Do you want to start, Shiro? Or me?"

"Let the skunk go first." The lemur-owl alien, Zyrill, was sitting on a ledge over the table, looking peeved. "If I had known it was _that_ one, I would've left him in Z-Space."

"What exactly is Z-Space?" Shiro said, trying to not let the alien's jab affect him. He would explain to Matt about what happened, once he figured out how to start that conversation. It seemed like Matt wasn't exactly sure where to begin either.

Matt's eyes lit up with that scientific fervor that Shiro knew well from back at the Garrison. "It's this extra dimension that allows for instantaneous travel via teleportation and advanced dimensional travel devices, like a teludav," he said in a rush, "That's this crazy old-tech wormhole creator thing, but anyways, basically, if we could figure out how to rip into Z-Space, we could tesseract around the universe and probably through time." Matt shot the small alien a glare as he put plates out onto the table. "But Zyrill just uses it for hiding from chores and teleporting around the ship."

"Can't help that my species is so, so, so, so, so much more advanced than yours," Zyrill said. It crossed one pair of arms and frowned down at Shiro. "Which makes it all the weirder that that's where I found you floating around. You shouldn't have been there."

"I don't know how I got there," Shiro said. He leaned forward, his hands on the table. "I was in a battle, and then I was here. I don't remember being in Z-Space."

"That's because your little underdeveloped craggy mush brain can't handle it," Zyrill said.

"Don't worry, he's like that to everyone," Era said. She walked over with a platter of what looked and smelled like burgers, except the 'meat' part looked a little, er, blue and the buns were dark brown. Pinkish-orange sauce dripped over the side of each burger, and there was a tray of the vegetables that Iwari had been cutting.

She set down the food and then hovered there, her fingertips on the table. Her silvery eyes darted toward Matt before she leaned forward, those eyes trained on Shiro. Now that she was close, he could see that the freckles that he thought were white earlier were actually light shades of pink, blue, and purple.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Um, sure," Shiro said.

Those silver eyes darkened to a stormy grey. "Why did you hurt Matt?"

Matt reached out and touched her arm. "Era, wait—"

"No, I need to hear his reason," she said, pulling her arm away from Matt and not looking away from Shiro. He held her sharp gaze, but he could tell the other crew members were waiting for his answer as well.

"I didn't want to," he said, "But I didn't see any other option."

"Explain," Nevan said. He was standing at the sink, washing off the pan that Era had used to cook the burgers. Beside him, Iwari was leaning against the counter, her arms crossed.

Shiro turned toward Matt, hoping that he could properly explain everything. "I didn't want you to have to face Myzax. I didn't think—I didn't want you to have to fight. Your father had been sent to the work camps, and I thought that by injuring you, you would be sent there too."

"That worked out well," Zyrill said.

Matt shot him a glare and shook his head at Shiro. "That's what I figured. At first, I didn't know what to think, but I've had a while to go over it. It's the only scenario that makes sense."

"I'm so sorry, Matt," Shiro said, "But it seemed like the only thing I could do to keep you safe."

"I know, Shiro."

"You hurt him to save him?" Era asked as she pulled back from the table.

Shiro nodded, and she seemed satisfied, her eyes lightening back to silver. She and Matt shared a look that clearly said they were going to have a long talk some time in the future.

"So you became a gladiator, right? We've heard about the Champion and his super great fighty-fighty skills." The lemur-owl alien leapt down from his ledge and pointed at Shiro's Galra tech arm. "Plus his arm. Got that from the druids, right?"

"Yes," Shiro said, hoping Matt wasn't made uncomfortable by his arm.

Zyrill hopped from the table to Matt's shoulder. "Looks like it's almost the same as yours, Earth boy," he said, one of his four hands on the top of Matt's head.

A chill went down Shiro's spine, and he looked at Matt closely. His arms and hands still seemed to be intact, there weren't any Galra parts. But the expression on his friend's face… It was sad and empathetic, not at all surprised.

"Matt?"

"Don't freak out, okay? It's not your fault. It got infected, and that was because the Galra take shitty care of their prisoners…"

The chill spread, freezing Shiro as Matt reached down and pulled up his left pants leg up to his knee, revealing a dull grey and black prosthetic where his leg should have been. Shiro felt like the air had been ripped out of him.

Matt knocked his knuckles against the Galra tech leg and then gave Shiro a weak smile.

"Look, if you try to blame yourself, I'll punch you in the face. Got it?"

* * *

A/N: Matt WILL find out about Pidge/Katie in the next chapter, I PROMISE.


	4. In Which Shiro Talks About A Left Arm

Disclaimer: I don't own VLD!

A/N: Thanks for all the kind comments. ^_^ This chapter sort of switches to Matt's POV, though it's still 3rd person because I SUCK at 1st. And it might flop over to Shiro's POV something because I also suck at 3RD limited…

* * *

In Which Shiro Talks About A Left Arm Named Pidge and Blows Matt's Mind

"You broke him again. Good job."

"Zyrill, you're not helping."

"Who said I wanted to help, huh?"

"Is he all right?"

"Shiro, come on, dude…"

Shiro had his elbows on the table and his head in his hands, and he hadn't moved from that position for the past fifteen minutes. Apparently Matt's leg had been too much for him to process along with everything else that had happened to him. Matt wasn't sure what to do, although he was pretty certain that following through with that threat to punch him wouldn't help. Or would it? Maybe Shiro would feel better if he felt like Matt got some kind of revenge? That'd sort of be a Shiro thing to think.

Matt looked at Iwari and Nevan, hoping for some kind of guidance here. The two of them shared a look, and then Iwari shook her head. Okay, so they weren't going to give him any pointers. Apparently this was one of those 'you-must-do-this-on-your-own-young-one' things that they sometimes forced on him. Great.

"He needs to eat," Era said, "He has to be hungry, right?" She looked up at their resident expert on Z-Space, who shrugged indifferently.

"I dunno, he's a human, who knows how Z-Space affects them," Zyrill said, "They're not supposed to hang out in there."

"I'll check him over later," Nevan said with a sigh, "Make sure he's in decent condition and not about to keel over."

"Thanks," Matt said, grateful that Nevan now had a great deal of medical experience with humans. See, being his guinea pig had been useful, kinda.

Era turned her silver eyes on Matt instead. "Well, you get hungry all the time, so I'm assuming he does too." Era picked up one of the burgers and set it on a plate before adding some of the palara root in a nice arrangement on the side. She bit her lip and pulled off the top bun of the burger.

Grabbing the makeshift ketchup substitute that she and Matt had worked on for weeks, she squirted a smiley face on the burger and slowly pushed it over toward Shiro, putting it between his arms and right under his nose so he couldn't do anything but look at it.

Matt wanted to hug her. Stars, she was weird and wonderful.

Shiro stirred, lifting his head a little. The savory smell must have gotten through to him. He looked over at Matt, sorrow in his dark eyes. "Matt, I'm—"

"What'd I say about the guilt and the face punching?" Matt said, "Trust me, I've gotten a lot better at the punching." He slid into bench across from Shiro and picked up one of the burgers. "Better eat that, it's getting cold."

Shiro glanced down at the burger as if noticing it for the first time and a very tiny smile curled his lips. He looked up at Era and nodded to her. "Thank you."

"Hope you like it," she said, returning his smile with a similar, hesitant one. She probably still hadn't decided how she felt about Shiro, judging on the way she was acting. Matt caught her eye, trying to silently tell her that it was okay, that he was fine. She picked up one of the palara roots from the plate Iwari had fixed and popped it into her mouth like an Earth cigar before heading over to the sink to work on the last few dishes. He was definitely going to owe her since she had already cooked lunch; normally he did the dishes when she cooked.

Shiro took a bite of the burger, closed his eyes in pure enjoyment, and then sat it down on the plate. He planted his hands palm down on the table and looked Matt squarely in the eyes. "I have to tell you something. I'm the Black Paladin of Voltron. Voltron is a giant robot originally from the planet Altea that's made up of five giant robot lions, and my lion is the head and torso. Katie pilots the left arm of Voltron, which is the Green Lion. She's the youngest person to ever pilot a Voltron lion, and she's excellent at it, and you should know she never stopped believing you and your dad were alive. She's been looking for you since you disappeared." Shiro closed his eyes and let out a long breath. "I've been wanting to tell you since I got here, but I didn't know how."

Matt's brain short-circuited. Katie? Piloting. A Green Lion. Voltron. He knew about Voltron. But. Katie in space. In a giant robot lion. Shiro was a head? Katie was an arm. Arm Katie. Katie the arm lion who never gave up.

At the sink, a pot dropped out of Era's hands as she whipped around to stare at them. "What?!"

"Just lay it all on him at once, why don't you?" Zyrill said, his tail lashing around, "Because that's a good plan. His little mush brain can totally take it."

"You know Katie Holt?" Iwari asked. At the same time, Nevan asked, "You're a Voltron paladin?"

"She's on my team," Shiro said, "And yes. We've both been paladins for roughly half a year." He focused on Matt again. "She's amazing, she's one of the toughest, bravest, smartest people I know."

Matt couldn't answer because he was currently stuck in his head, thoughts pinging around like they were trapped in an old-school pinball machine. Katie. Ping. Voltron. Ping. Arm. Ping. Space Katie. Ping. Ping. Ping. Space was dangerous, what was she doing in space. Dead ball.

He felt a hand on his neck, gentle fingers touching his cheek. "Come back, luv," Era said quietly, and he managed to glance over at her. Her touch anchored him.

Okay. He was okay.

But shit, no he wasn't—

"My Katie?" Matt asked, forcing the pinball thoughts to slow down.

"She goes by Pidge now, but yes," Shiro said with a nod.

If Matt been eating something, he would've choked on it. "What? Pidge? Like. Pidge?" That had been his nickname for her when she was little and so awkward and super annoying. She had followed him around all the time like the pigeons in the park followed whoever had food. He hadn't known how to spell it, so at first he had spelled it with a 'd' and it had just stuck. It had eventually morphed into an affectionate name instead of an insult after she stopped being the most aggravating toddler imaginable that destroyed all his stuff.

"It's a long story, but she wouldn't give up on looking for you and your dad, so they kicked her out of the Garrison," Shiro said, "That's when she cut her hair, created a whole new identity, and re-joined the Garrison to look for you."

So damn stubborn. Tears welled up in Matt's eyes, and he roughly brushed them away. "And now she's an arm…?"

"Start from the beginning, if you don't mind, Shiro," Iwari said.

"And eat something, both of you," Nevan said, nodding to the plate of burgers between them, "Era went through all that trouble of drawing a smiling face on it, so you better eat it."

"It's called a smiley face, not a smiling face," Era said.

Zyrill snorted."The space skunk ate the right eye and that side of its head, so now it's a disfigured face and smiling because it's missing the part of the brain that tells it its in pain. Just saying."

"If you would all stop talking, Shiro could actually talk," Iwari said, which quieted her rowdy crew and gave Shiro an audience.


	5. In Which a Space Skunk Tells a Story

Disclaimer: I don't own Voltron!

A/N: Welp, let's carry on with that Shiro-got-teleported-to-Matt plot line, shall we… *side-eyes S3 Shiro* Btw, I started this before S3 came out, so it's not exactly canon-compliant. Lotor hasn't shown up to wreak havoc on Team Voltron just yet.

 **In Which a Space Skunk Tells a Story and Gets a New Outfit**

Shiro told them everything, elaborating on details whenever Matt asked for more info. If Matt trusted these guys, then hell, he might as well trust them too. He told them about his escape and finding the Blue Lion with the others, about the Castle and Voltron and being a paladin. He told them about the team and their battles and the Blade of Marmora. It was a torrent of words, a summary of all the adventures and nonsense that had been happening since he had gotten off that Galra prison ship.

As he recounted all the things that had gone on over the past few months, he felt like he was talking about someone else. It just seemed so strange and impossible, like it could only happen to somebody in a movie or a book. Space battles and psychic cat robots and alien castles. But no, that was just his everyday life now.

Wasn't he just some kid from Earth? What in the world had happened to make the universe look at him and go, yeah, okay, sure, let's mess with that guy? But there was no point in stewing in self-pity. If he did that, it would be the pity party of the century, and he wasn't that type of person. Still, Shiro did have to wonder why he was so often at the epicenter of universal conflict.

He talked about the last battle with Zarkon and how he was worried about Allura and Coran and his team. With no way to know what had happened to them after the battle, he could only hope that everyone was fine and back at the castle. The thought that maybe they had all been scattered to the ends of the universe made him anxious…

"But Katie is probably all right," Matt said, looking at Shiro for some kind of agreement, "I mean, maybe you're the only one who got teleported into Z space?"

"I really don't know," Shiro said, meeting Matt's eyes. "I wish I did." He couldn't remember anything from his time in Z space or if he had been alone.

Zyrill swished his tail down and bopped the tufted end up against Matt's head. "I didn't see anyone else there, let alone another you-ish person."

"So at least she's not in Z space," Matt said, "Probably."

Shiro put his hands flat on the table, wishing he could reassure Matt that Pidge was fine. Honestly, he wanted the same reassurance. He needed to know that his family back at the castle was all right, but he had no idea how to contact them. Communications was not his area of expertise, and he wasn't even sure where they were in the universe. Or how long he had been gone.

"What date is it?" he asked.

"Earthwise, I think it's September 25," Matt said, "Our ship is on Kythra time, and that's the 9th Day of the Shining Turn."

Shiro stared. "Are…are you sure?"

"Yeah, I mean—Iwari, it's the 9th, right?" Matt said, turning toward the reptilian alien.

Her fan-like ears feathered out and inclined toward Matt. "I think he was talking about the 25th."

"Oh, right," Matt said. Of course Matt Holt, #1 Star Trek fan, would get caught up in alien time measurements… "As far as I can tell, it's the 25th based on the MST time zone."

That meant Shiro had been gone for over a month. Shit. Had he been in Z space that long? Or had he been somewhere else before then? Where had all that time disappeared to? Shit, he hated this so much, these gaps in his memory.

"Are you all right, Shiro?" Era asked, her voice gentle. She was perched at the galley island, right beside Nevan.

"I don't know…" It seemed to be a great response for everything at the moment. "Is there any way to know how long I was in that Z space place?" Shiro looked at the lemur-owl who blinked back at him.

"Yeah, let me cut all your hair off."

"What?"

"I can tell how long you've been in Z space by burning your hair while you do a dance—"

"Zyrill," Iwari said, her tone quiet but edged with a sharpness that made Zyrill shut up for a second.

"I was just teasing him," Zyrill said. He jumped down onto the table and peered into Shiro's eyes, getting uncomfortably close to his face. Shiro held perfectly still as the small alien sniffed him and pinched the skin on his left hand. After a moment, he leapt from the table to Iwari's shoulder. "You were there about four weeks your time, space skunk."

Shiro's shoulders slumped with a small bit of relief. At least if he was missing time, it hadn't been spent anywhere besides some magical pocket dimension.

"We're going to try to find the Castle, right?" Matt asked, sliding out of the booth and looking at Iwari. "We just need to figure out where Voltron has been sighted, then we can make our way in that direction."

"You know it can't be that immediate, and it's not that easy," Iwari said, "We're supposed to join the attack on the quintessence installation in three days."

"And the last time anyone saw Voltron, it was on the other side of the universe," Nevan said. The big alien stood up and stretched, not looking at Matt. "It'll take months to get there."

That was like a punch to Shiro's gut. Months? That meant that this ship didn't have the same hyperspeed capabilities as the Galra battleships or the Castle of Lions. What he wouldn't give for a nice wormhole right now.

"Plus Talax is down on that planet doing recon," Zyrill put in, his tail lashing in the air. "You're not saying we should jet after some mechanical cats and ditch her, are you?"

"No," Matt snapped, "I didn't say that at all. And I didn't say we should drop everything, I just…" He opened his hands palm up, a pleading gesture. "My sister's there." You could hear the thick homesickness in Matt's voice.

"And my team," Shiro said, "I don't want to inconvenience you, but I really need to get back to them." Damn it, a whole month was already gone. How long was it going to be before he saw them again?

"Couldn't we go after the mission?" Era said, poking Nevan in the shoulder, "We could tell the other cells that we're going to meet with Voltron."

"Which is apparently aligned with the Blade," Nevan said, spitting out the last word like a curse.

"Who aren't all that bad," Iwari said with a meaningful, long look pointed at Nevan. She stepped over toward Matt and put her hand on his shoulder. "Of course we'll go find your sister, as well as your team, Shiro," she said, her gaze flicking to him for a moment before returning to Matt, "But we really do have to finish our mission here first. We have people counting on us."

That was better than not going at all. Though Shiro was starting to get the feeling that Matt really had fallen in with a pack of rebels since they were planning some kind of mission against a quintessence installation. That had been Pidge's fledgling theory, anyways, that Matt had been rescued by some kind of resistance. "You're all freedom fighters, aren't you?"

"Nah, we're just a friendly band of scavengers, looking for space trash," Zyrill said. His face warped into a savage grin. "We found you, didn't we?"

"That's it." Matt took a swipe at the small alien, who chuckled and jumped over to the kitchen island.

Era's hand darted out and clamped down on his arm, holding him in place so she could roughly tousle the fur on his head. "What have we told you about being nice to visitors?"

"We don't get visitors, we get potential recruits!"

"We're officially scavengers," Iwari said, ignoring Matt as he stomped past her, zeroing in on Zyrill. As he started a wrestling match with the small alien, Iwari kept talking as if nothing strange was going on behind her. Shiro's chest ached as he desperately missed his own bunch of miscreants. "But unofficially, we're a part of the resistance in this sector."

"Do you guys have a name?"

"No, we're not all as pretentious as the Blade," Nevan said, scowling. He stalked over and leaned down to look Shiro in the eye, narrowing his own gaze as Shiro sat back. "Come on, paladin. Let's go make sure you're not dying from Z space exposure and get you something to wear besides armor."

"Uh…okay…"


End file.
